Dan's Cameras Part Eight - Not Really Photography

So there’s a big long gap at the turn of the century (odd to say that) where I took pictures, but really didn’t do any serious photography.  I certainly didn’t pull out my 4x5 much (read: ever) and even when I used my Nikon gear, it wasn’t for anything serious.  My subject matter basically consisted of the pups (Maxine and Hans) and the guys when they were out for the summer.  It even got to the point where I increasingly used a little point and shoot film camera because I got tired of lugging the 35mm gear on hikes with the guys.

It was small enough to pack in a small backpack and gave me decent enough images for memories.  And the few times I tried to take serious shots with it, it failed miserably.  I was not really doing photography.

As I went into private practice, my land use work meant that I’d need a camera for site photographs.  When I looked into getting a better point and shoot, I realized that the world was going digital.  After a bit of research, I decided to get a decent digital point and shoot so I could see what it could produce.

Thus I wound up with my first digital camera a Canon PowerShot G2.  I quickly realized not to expect 4x5 quality from it, and to suffer through the long shutter lag time (terrible for capturing quickly moving dogs and kids), but to appreciate a decent image quality and the ability to instantly access images instead of waiting for days, weeks or months to see images and to have to pay extra to do so.

Still, for the most part, my photographs were mostly of the pups, the guys and work sites.  I still didn’t feel much of a pull to seriously photograph. . . until a few years later.

For a while I was following several technology websites and one day there was an article about a nice new point and shoot designed to produce higher quality images but to still fit in a pocket.  The G2 had more controls than most, but was much thicker than most point and shoot cameras, and I’d been thinking about getting something that could literally fit in a shirt pocket.  I read some reviews online, which was great, and decided that if Schneider Kreuznach was willing to put their optics in a Samsung, it couldn’t be all that bad.

You should know that the 210mm lens I had for my 4x5 was a Schneider and it was sharp as could be.  Another thing you should know is, a camera can have all the bells and whistles in the world, but in the end, a quality image comes from two things - the optics and the film/sensor.  Period.  

With the Samsung I eventually started taking images that were more than the photos of the pups, guys, Holden or work.  Still, they were mostly images while I was at a work site or on walks, but I was starting to look at light, geometries and patterns again.  It was slow going, because the images were of questionable quality given the size of the sensor and the fact that I had not photographed in so long, but I was starting to look at things again.  And that was progress.